Crooked Way
by Apollymi
Summary: Moving on is never an easy thing to do, especially when the past is known to come back to haunt you. (Sequel to "Where Angels", also by me. YBxSK AU)
1. Prologue

**Crooked Way**  
Prologue  
by Apollymi

**Word Count:** 1,006**  
Genre: **Shounen-ai, Bakura/Kaiba  
**Sequel to: **Where Angels  
**Written for: **24 Hour Themes (on Dreamwidth)**  
Author's Note:** Yuugiou and all its characters are copyright to Takahashi Kazuki and associated copyright holders, of which I am not one. I do own the storyline, such that it is, though. So the moral of this story is: Mine, steal, die.

* * *

Mokuba had known there was going to be fallout from his Niisama's ordeal at the hands of this still unnamed Collector. At the very least, he had learned to avoid that word in his Niisama's presence. That apparently went double in Bakura's case; the white-haired man tolerated the word even less than his big brother did.

It seemed like he was constantly holding these Sunday nine a.m. meetings, reminding the staff of the new rules. Okay, maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration, since this was only the second one he had brought together since his brother came home from the hospital, but it felt as though there had been quite a few already, maybe even a dozen – and that was probably because he hated doing this. He _hated_ doing it.

Personnel matters had never been something he enjoyed dealing with, at least when it came to the house staff. Personally, he much more preferred dealing with Kaiba Corp employees. Them, he could at least fire when they screwed up. The house staff, though, was another matter entirely. Them, he had to live with. Yeah, he could fire them too, if he took the notion, but upsetting them also ran the risk of food poisoning and the like.

But more than all of that, he hated having to do these meetings because it meant having to admit there was something wrong. It meant admitting that there was something— That his big brother had not been able to bounce back from this.

Oh, Niisama was definitely doing his best. He went to work every day, just like he always did, even if he was often home a lot earlier now than he ever had been before that Mokuba could remember. Part of that no doubt had to do with the fact that Bakura had flat out informed him that he would be home before it got late – and often followed that up with showing up at Niisama's office to drag him home.

(He never thought he would be thinking this, but Bakura was good for his big brother. He actually bullied his brother into taking care of himself, which was something he had all but given up on himself. But if someone had told Mokuba two years ago that he would be thinking this, after Bakura kidnapped him and held him hostage on the roof of Kaiba Corp, he would have laughed in their faces, to say the very least. There was every possibility that he might have even been laughing too hard to keep from doing something a bit more… drastic to them.

Besides, he had had some long conversations with Bakura since the older man seemed to have moved into their house about the things that had happened two years ago: at Battle City, on the blimp, and even on the rooftop. Yuugi would probably deem him mad, but he believed Bakura when he said that had been the monster living inside him and not him. He believed Bakura when he said that he had been able to see what was happening but that he wasn't able to do anything about it. After Noa had taken over his mind in that weird virtual world, he knew what it was like not to be in control of your own mind or body. He certainly couldn't cast any stones.

But if Bakura hurt his Niisama in any way, he was personally calling in the assassins.)

Yeah, Niisama was definitely doing better, but Mokuba was starting to think that he was never going to be back to where he had before all this started, before the Collector had shown up. That person, whoever he was, had taken his big brother for two days, and Niisama had come back... different. He wasn't going to say if it was a 'good' different or a 'bad' different, but it was indeed a kind of different.

But that was neither here nor there right now. Right now, his main concern was making sure that _that_ word was not said in his brother's or Bakura's presence again anytime soon.

Really, he was fairly sure he had to have held more than just a couple of these little meetings with the house staff. It was hard to avoid _that_ word at work – there were enough duelists in the world who wanted to try to buy a specific card off his brother or get a rare edition of a Kaiba Corp Duel Disk that it came up from time to time – but there was really no excuse for it at home.

And it wasn't as if there were any real indications that hearing it actually affected Niisama. It definitely wasn't as if he reacted in any major way. Oftentimes there wasn't even so much as a shudder. It was just that Niisama would go quiet and withdrawn and usually would just leave the room; what happened after that, Mokuba didn't really know. Wherever Niisama went and whatever he did when he left after hearing _that_ word, he never bothered Mokuba with it. If Bakura knew, he was keeping it all very hush.

But Bakura's... idiosyncrasies weren't the problem today. Today the issue had a lot more to do with his big brother and everything that was happening to him. More than that, it had to do with what he was going to do to people if they didn't stop upsetting him. Niisama might have been the kind to break someone financially, but Mokuba found he much preferred a more permanent route. And if people didn't start listening to what he had to say, he was going to start exercising that. He could prove to people that he did indeed have assassins on speed dial.

"Look," he began. And there really was no way to be nice about this. "We don't ask a lot for what we offer in pay. I'm just asking that, in addition to what you all usually do, that you do _not_ let the word 'collector' come up in this house..."

* * *

**30 December 2013**

This chapter of this story has been done since May this year. Why I didn't post it? Lack of interest here on FFnet. Why I'm posting it now? No goddamn idea.

If you have an interest in my writing, leave me a quick comment or PM me or something. I'm this goddamn close to just swearing off fanfiction from here on out because no one is reading it.

Apollymi


	2. Chapter 1: Schedules

**Crooked Way**  
Chapter One: "Schedules"  
by Apollymi

**Word Count:** 1,215**  
Genre: **Shounen-ai, Bakura/Kaiba  
**Sequel to: **Where Angels  
**Written for: **24 Hour Themes (on Dreamwidth)**  
Author's Note:** Yuugiou and all its characters are copyright to Takahashi Kazuki and associated copyright holders, of which I am not one. I do own the storyline, such that it is, though. So the moral of this story is: Mine, steal, die.

* * *

'Four o'clock,' Kaiba thought to himself with an inaudible sigh. 'At this point in the afternoon, Mokuba should definitely be home from school.'

What was frustrating was that he wasn't there himself. He had gotten used to leaving early on Fridays to spend the weekend at home with Mokuba and Bakura. Today was proving to be the exception to that rule, though. The board of directors meeting had run late earlier in the day, and that had been enough to throw his entire day off. As it stood now, he figured it would be at least another hour or so before he was able to finish everything up and head out.

'And if I'm an hour or more late getting home, Mokuba will be sending out the cavalry,' he thought with some amusement. His little brother was a bit... overprotective, ever since what had happened two years ago; no, in truth, the two of them had always been a bit overprotective of each other their entire lives. That was fine. It was just how they were.

'No, Mokuba won't even get a chance to send out the cavalry. Bakura will already be here, if he isn't already in the building somewhere.'

He knew better than to expect to know exactly where the white-haired man was at all times. He had gotten involved with a thief-and a damn good one at that. Trying to keep a finger on him at all times was futile at best.

Besides, a lot of the time Bakura did actually hang around Kaiba Corp with him... and he made no bones about the fact it was to keep Kaiba both safe and out of trouble. They both did still have a common enemy out there.

He fought the urge to shiver slightly. What had happened two years was still heavy on his mind. It was a hard thing to shake, apparently: being kidnapped to have your soul and magic drained as a battery for the Unnamed Pharaoh. It was not easy finding out that the last person who had been taken, Bakura Ryou, had been drained to a lifeless husk of a body, left alive only because his body didn't know it was time to die yet. It was not easy knowing that the person behind all this, that thrice-damned Collector, was still out there somewhere.

Hell, for all Kaiba knew, the man might well be getting ready to try the whole stunt all over again. They had recovered the Sennen Items, sending some of them back to Egypt with Malik's sister when she had come to check up on him, and Mutou Yuugi still had the Puzzle. Somehow the items being divided up as they were didn't seem to be a strong enough deterrent. Somehow they should be doing more. What, he didn't exactly know, but it seemed like there should be more that they could do. Somehow.

"Are you going to be in here all afternoon working?"

And speaking of Bakura being in the building already and coming to retrieve him… What was that expression: 'speak of the devil and he shall appear'? It was particularly apt where Bakura was concerned; the man delighted in appearing out of nowhere.

Like right now, there was no way Bakura could have gotten from the door to the filing cabinet quickly enough and quietly enough that Kaiba wouldn't have spotted him. Now, the air vent in the ceiling above said filing cabinet… That presented a whole more Bakura-friendly options. If there had ever been a person who was dementedly in love with tiny crawlspaces, it had to be Bakura.

And honestly, most of the time it was kind of nice knowing that Bakura was around. He wasn't going to go as far as to say that he was frightened of being here alone, in his own office, in a company that he ran, in a building that he owned. He was Kaiba Seto, after all, and he wasn't afraid. But happier knowing that the white-haired thief was around? Definitely.

If anyone had asked him a few years ago, back in high school, if he would be happy to see the Spirit of the Ring on a daily basis, he would have had their heads for idiocy. Now, though? It was a plain fact of life. Having Bakura around was good, not because Kaiba couldn't take care of himself, but because Bakura being around meant he didn't have to do it all the time; occasionally, he could let someone else take care of him, instead of him doing the same for everyone around him.

Actually, no, he didn't have to justify it: he just enjoyed having Bakura around. He enjoyed letting Bakura take care of him. He enjoyed seeing how well Bakura and Mokuba got along.

And he would end anyone who tried to threaten that. He was allowed to be selfish on this, and he was going to be.

"I'll be finishing up in an hour or so," he answered, taking a quick visual inventory of the stacks of papers on his desk.

Bakura just shot him a look, before stalking over to flop down in one of the chairs in front of his desk, propping both feet up on the desk itself and crossing his hands over his stomach. "Then I'll wait around until you're done. _You_ can explain to the half-pint why we're so late getting home."

That was a threat if he had ever heard one. Mokuba was never too happy when he was late getting home, even if he called first to let the boy know. Bakura had been known to smooth things over on occasion, when Kaiba's younger brother got too annoyed over a late night, but Bakura's word was gold, at least to him: if he said he wasn't going to do something, he damn well wasn't going to do it.

He took another glance at the papers piled up before him and winced as he debated the issues. He could get this pile out of the way now but have to deal with Mokuba when he got home... or he could go on home and just have more papers to deal with on Monday. Once upon a time, he would have automatically chosen the former option; that was just the way he knew to run his business and life; but in the past couple of years, he had been making strides to spend more time with his family.

"Ten minutes, and I'll head out," he compromised, also a new skill he was working on.

Bakura shrugged, as if to say that it was on Kaiba's head, and didn't say anything.

Ten minutes should give him long enough to work through the most pertinent parts of the stuff in front of him. It wasn't a perfect solution, but it was still more of one that he would have considered not so long ago.

And maybe he could shave it down to five minutes, if he rushed through some of the work that was in front of him. Most of it seemed to have to do with the fact it was apparently pay raise time in the company again, meaning he had to sign off on each individual person's merit-based pay increase or lack thereof. It was time-consuming and frustrating, but it let the company hold on to some of its best employees when other corporations might have tried to otherwise tempt them away.

Bakura had claimed that he'd overheard people calling it the 'putting up with Kaiba Seto pay hike'. Bakura had hated hearing it, going so far as to have some extremely petty revenge on the people he'd been eavesdropping on, but personally, he was inclined to agree with it. He was demanding and a perfectionist and a bit of a professional pain in the ass; he knew and accepted this about himself. In fact, he almost took pride in that fact. Not many people could say that with absolute honesty and conviction.

In one of the folders he was going through, there was a note tucked, folded up to the size of an eraser. In precise English letters, his name was written. For the life of him, all he could think was that someone had gone through a lot of trouble to slip him a note. For the sheer dedication of it, he would have almost suspected Bakura... but the other man looked confused, a frown on his face as he sat back up straight to stare at the piece of paper Kaiba held in his hands.

So it hadn't come from Bakura, then. That didn't leave many people it could be from. Mokuba maybe, or the girl down in Receiving who had had a crush on him back in high school and waited until he was with Bakura to say anything about it, or perhaps even his secretary, telling him to go home before it's too late on a Friday afternoon? There were too many options, really.

All that in mind, he carefully unfolded the note, doing his level best not to tear it in any sort of way. Somehow that seemed important even as he was opening it.

The first thing he noticed was that the words were all written in English. There was an odd stiltedness to them, like the writer was trying to be overly formal or something.

What really concerned him, though, were the first two words: "Mister Kaiba." Not many people called him that. His overseas competitors, for certain, and some fans, definitely... but not like this. Even on paper, there was something sinister about those two words.

A warm hand wrapped around his arm. "Seto? Babe?" Bakura's voice was slowly breaking through his shock, and Kaiba lifted his eyes to look at the other man. He wasn't sure when, but Bakura had circled the desk-or gone over it-and was sitting in front of him, a worried frown on his face. "Talk to me. You're as white as a ghost. What's it say?"

He hadn't actually read beyond the opening. Surely there had to be a whole lot more to it than what he had read. Taking a deep breath to steel himself, he glanced back down to keep reading.

_"Mister Kaiba, _

_I see you have been keeping yourself quite busy. I have been as well. I will be seeing you and the thief again before long. Hopefully this time, you will feel more inclined to assist me with completing my collection. It truly will be perfect._

_Your friend"_

It wasn't signed, but it didn't have to be. Mokuba had banned _that_ word and everything about it from being mentioned around him, but even without that, he only knew of one person who had... demanded his assistance in completely a collection of any sort. Only one person.

The Collector was back.

* * *

**30 December 2013**

Second verse, same as the first.

Apollymi


	3. Chapter 2: Safety

**Crooked Way**  
Chapter Two: "Safety"  
by Apollymi

**Word Count:** 1,672**  
Genre: **Shounen-ai, Bakura/Kaiba  
**Sequel to: **Where Angels  
**Written for: **24 Hour Themes (on Dreamwidth)**  
Author's Note:** Yuugiou and all its characters are copyright to Takahashi Kazuki and associated copyright holders, of which I am not one. I do own the storyline, such that it is, though. So the moral of this story is: Mine, steal, die.

* * *

Kaiba didn't actually remember coming back to the house. There had to have been a drive of at least half an hour, but he didn't recall even a split second of it. What he did remember, however, was waking up, so to say, with his fifteen-year-old younger brother trying to crawl into his lap and Bakura pacing heavily only a half step away. Clearly, neither was any too willing to let him too far out their sight. The thought galled at half of him, but the other half was more than willing to let them fuss.

Of course, really, it was Mokuba who was doing the fretting and fussing. Bakura was... Fuming seemed like a good word for what it was Bakura was doing. The white-haired man was performing tightly paced loops of the room, never going more than a step or so away from arms' length of the couch.

The whole thing should have galled all of him. He should have been protesting that he was capable of taking care of himself and had no need for either of them worrying over him. He wanted to be saying that... but the words weren't coming.

Damn it all! The dreams-nightmares-had only really just stopped in the last few weeks. Now they were all but guaranteed to make a return visit... and wouldn't that just be lovely? He still hadn't gotten to the point where he could sleep with all the lights off anymore, even with Bakura in the room and the bed with him, and he was starting to think he was never going to get past that particular little phobia.

Finally, Bakura seemed to come to some kind of consensus, reaching a conclusion to the argument he had clearly been having with himself. He slowed down and finally stood still right in front of the Kaiba brothers, raking a hand roughly through already messy white hair.

"Mokuba?" He felt more than saw his little brother turn at least part of his attention to the thief. "We need to let any one else involved with the Sennen Items know that the bastard might be back. Can you call them?" He sighed, and there was a bit of a growl tucked into the end of it. "I would really rather not deal with the Ishtars any time soon."

Mokuba nodded. "Of course, Bakura-kun. I'll get on the phone with them right away." And despite Skype being Mokuba's new favorite thing to do, Kaiba would note that he wasn't volunteering that with anyone else involved in this whole crazy thing. Aside from how difficult it could be figure out the time difference, if Malik Ishtar was in Egypt at the moment, when it was after six o'clock here…

Once Mokuba was out of the room, closing the door quietly behind him, Bakura took a seat next to Kaiba on the sofa. For a long moment, he felt grey eyes watching him before Bakura simply stretched out, pulling Kaiba down to lay on top of him.

That, more than anything else, pulled him out of his fugue. "Bakura?" And he could be proud of how steady his voice was. He sounded as if he wasn't bothered by all this in the least, at least to his own ears.

"We'll get the bastard, babe." The words were said softly, barely more than a whisper and almost not enough to move his hair when the other was speaking right up against it. It reminded him of when Bakura had been intangible and brushed a hand over Kaiba's hair: at the time, his mind had described it as 'the afterthought of a touch'. This was actually a lot the same.

"I know." He wasn't going to be caught off guard this time. He knew what was coming, and he knew how bad it could be. He wasn't about to let that bastard take him again, and he damn sure wasn't going to be a battery for the other Yuugi to break into this world. No way in hell was that going to happen. "We'll stop him."

Bakura nodded, tugging him just a little close, closer than he would have thought possible without them being the same person... and that shouldn't have sounded so appealing.

Wordlessly, the white-haired man lifted one of Kaiba's hands, placing delicate kisses to the scars that still encircled his wrists and part of his forearms. They were leftovers from his stay with the Coll- with the bastard, and this simple act always went such a long way to relaxing him after the nightmares. To a lesser extent, it was also doing the same thing now.

The same scars were on both of Bakura's arms as well, but they were scars that Bakura Ryou had worn. The bastard had completely cut out Ryou's soul, killing what made him _him_ and leaving a body that didn't know that it was time to die. His Bakura had been able to assume that body, and while somehow the body's eyes had changed to be the same color as his Bakura's had been back in Egypt, apparently he hadn't been able to get rid of the scars on the body.

And he might still not believe in magic, but he believed in what he could see and touch. That was what was real. He could see Bakura. He could touch Bakura. Bakura was real.

Bakura had once explained magic to him as a kind of science. On that basis, he could accept it. He had even managed to use it once, while he had been being held, to put Bakura into Bakura Ryou's body. He hadn't tried anything with it since then. It was too inexact, too much room for error. He didn't want to deal too much with something so... temperamental as this magic. If it needed to be done, Bakura could do it. If Bakura couldn't do it, then it probably didn't need to be done at all. It was a gross oversimplification, but that was his story and he was sticking to it.

"With any luck," Bakura was saying, "he'll find out that the Sennen Items are too far out of his reach to try anything like what he did last time."

Kaiba sighed, holding himself stiffly, not letting himself relax into the hold that Bakura had on him. He could not relax, not yet. He didn't think he was going to be able to relax at all, not until the Collector-the bastard-was well and truly gone for good. And frankly, he didn't care how someone went about making him that way. He had no moral issues with taking the bastard out and putting a bullet in his head.

It wasn't an elegant solution, but he was rather certain that it would prove to be a fairly permanent one. That was what mattered.

"That may not be a good thing, though," he finally commented in a low voice. "If he were going after the Sennen Items, we would be able to predict where he was heading. He's got to be trying something different this time, since he doesn't have them." He frowned hard. "I have no idea how he would go about doing something like what he was trying before. I don't understand how he was able to use the Sennen Items to get as far as he did the first time."

"How long were you with the idiot brigade in Ancient Egypt?"

It sounded like an insane segue, but if nothing else, in two years, he had learned that Bakura usually had a point he was going for with these segues. "Not so much. I... I guess I was mostly trying to get the hell back out of there and kept ending up watching Seth."

And that was a bit of a tender subject. The other Yuugi had been convinced that he was the reincarnation of Seth, even though he was pretty damn sure that was completely impossible. However, he had been able to see some of Seth's memories, things that didn't happen in the Ancient Egypt world, things from years before that. And Seth had been Bakura's lover. That reason alone was worth never bringing the man up; that he was still... uncomfortable with the idea of reincarnation was just icing on the cake.

"The Sennen Items were created by killing ninety-nine people and entrapping their souls into the gold as it was being smelt." Bakura took in a deep breath and released it shakily. "Those people were from my village. They were my friends, my family... and I just hid and watch them die." He sighed again, but when he spoke next, his voice was steady once more. "So there's a lot of death and life trapped in those items. Bringing people to life should be child's play to them, but it probably wouldn't work right."

"So... someone couldn't be brought back to life with them?" See, this was what he meant about an inexact science!

"Oh, they could probably be brought back to life. I mean, look how close the Pharaoh's midget said he came with the Pharaoh. But there's no way anyone brought back by them would be... the same as they were before. It probably would turn them a lot like I used to be." He raked a hand through his hair, giving it a light tug as he clearly struggled with words. "And that's probably why he was using human souls, like _yadonushi_'s and yours: he was trying to find a viable replacement for the Items, to bring the Pharaoh back in a way that wouldn't leave him insane."

He finally forced himself to relax, wrapping his arms around Bakura as best he could while lying on top of the other man. "Someone's bound to know a way to deal with this."

Bakura nodded. "Definitely. We'll find them, and we'll find out what we need to do. In the meanwhile, we'll just need to take some extra precautions."

And that didn't sound good at all.

* * *

**30 December 2013**

Yeah, same thing again here: if you're reading, please let me know.

Apollymi


	4. Chapter 3: Sensibility

**Crooked Way**  
Chapter Three: "Sensibility"  
by Apollymi

**Word Count:** 1,160**  
Genre: **Shounen-ai, Bakura/Kaiba  
**Sequel to: **Where Angels  
**Written for: **24 Hour Themes (on Dreamwidth)**  
Author's Note:** Yuugiou and all its characters are copyright to Takahashi Kazuki and associated copyright holders, of which I am not one. I do own the storyline, such that it is, though. So the moral of this story is: Mine, steal, die.

* * *

It was a little surprising. Somehow he had expected that Bakura's idea of 'extra precautions' would be elaborate and... well... maybe even a bit of Rube Goldberg. After all, Bakura had been known for that sort of thing once upon a time, back in high school. But instead the plan was simple, at least for now: Kaiba wasn't to go anywhere alone. Actually, none of them were to go anywhere alone, but Bakura had been looking right at him when he said it, so he figured that was especially directed at him.

Mokuba had put in calls to Yuugi and his merry band of misfits, at least the ones that he had numbers for, and let hem know what was going on, and Yuugi was going to pass the information along to whoever Mokuba couldn't reach. That meant they were in the loop and, theoretically, couldn't be used as hostages. It all really depended on how much backup the bastard Collector had.

When he had captured Kaiba two years ago, the Collector had made it very clear that he had had no need for Kaiba's money; he didn't _need_ ransom money. He still figured that meant the Collector had money of his own and probably quite a bit of it. It wouldn't be impossible for someone with enough money to pull a repeat of last time off again. After all, once he had fully recuperated last time, he put his considerable talent to trying to track the bastard down, only to find out that the house he had been held at was abandoned and the most recent former owners had been dead for six months by then. None of them could be the Collector then, which meant he had somehow piggybacked his electricity from somewhere and probably had a handy escape route already planned.

So not only did the Collector have money, he was also smart, to go along with his insanity. He figured it had to be insanity: why else would anyone want to raise someone like the Pharaoh from the grave?

Admittedly, he might be a bit biased, since the two of them had never really gotten along during all the time he had known the so-called Spirit of the Puzzle, but also to him, it made no goddamn sense to try to raise someone you didn't personally know from the dead. After all, if something happened to Mokuba or Bakura, yeah, he might be willing to try and do something rather rash to get them back, but he couldn't say he would do something like that for, perhaps, Yuugi.

Trying to figure out the psychology of a madman was definitely not his strong suit. He didn't really even understand why he was trying, except to be a bit more prepared for what was coming. He didn't want to be taken by surprise again.

Once the plan was laid out, it had been time for dinner, even if it seemed none of them really felt like eating. Even Bakura, who usually ate like someone was going to take it away from him and never feed him again, had barely done more than pick at his food.

This bit of news had thrown them all for a loop, and frankly, he wasn't finding any of this too surprising. Disappointing, yes; he had been just about to start to think that maybe, _maybe_, the Collector had either been killed or given up on his obsession with the other Yuugi; but definitely not surprising. Mokuba bid them both a half-hearted 'good night' just after ten and wandered upstairs to his bedroom.

It should have been alarming to see Mokuba so downtrodden, but honestly, he was feeling much the same way. He just was still doing his best not to let it show. He was going to do his best to keep it secret, if he could help it.

"Ready?" Bakura asked, pushing himself slowly to his feet. For the life of him, he looked like this was a huge effort, one that he had had to really exert himself to manage. "There really isn't anything else we can do tonight. We should try to look at this again tomorrow, when we're a bit clearer."

It made sense. It made a lot of sense actually. They needed to be clear-minded to stay ahead of the Collector.

He nodded and stood as well. "I'm ready," he answered.

Nominally, Bakura had a room of his own, located on a different wing of the house from his and Mokuba's. He couldn't remember Bakura sleeping there more than a few days. After that, he had moved himself into Kaiba's room and had just never left. For the most part, he was actually all right with that. But there were those nights that he really wished Bakura would go back to the room they had given him when he first moved in. Usually, those were the nights when he had one of the nightmares.

With anyone else, the reason for wanting privacy on those nights would be a lack of trust: it would be giving the world a handle on him, on what he was afraid of. No, not afraid, just... disturbed by. He wasn't even going to admit to Mokuba that the mere thought of the Collector was... disturbing to him, much less the rest of the world at large. There was just no way. With Bakura, though, it had more to do with not wanting the white-haired man to see him at his worst. It was a bit silly, perhaps, and definitely a sign of weakness, but he couldn't shake the feeling and he could never quite give in to the urge to tell the other man to leave.

While he might well be a little better about letting his guard down around some people, namely the two he shared a house with, he still wasn't all the way to fully trusting another with his weaknesses. With Mokuba and to some extent Bakura, he knew they weren't going to take advantage of him. It was still hard to shake, though. No matter what, he still was a very private person, and the mere idea of sharing something that intimate with someone was well beyond him.

Besides, as he always told himself, Bakura had already seen him at his worst: in that dank basement where the Collector had housed him, when he had been shaking with pain, doing his best not to either cry or throw up, and dreaming of a life he still wasn't entirely sure used to be his.

Dreaming of Seth, that was something that he never wanted to have repeated. Thankfully to date, it hadn't come back up. He had never gotten another glimpse of his supposed past life. Those had only come when he was being held-tortured-by the Collector.

And that was why he never told Bakura to leave or not to even come to the bed with him.

* * *

**30 December 2013**

If you're still reading, leave a comment.

Apollymi


	5. Chapter 4: Tenacity

**Crooked Way**  
Chapter Four: "Tenacity"  
by Apollymi

**Word Count:** 1,316**  
Genre: **Shounen-ai, Bakura/Kaiba  
**Sequel to: **Where Angels  
**Written for: **24 Hour Themes (on Dreamwidth)**  
Author's Note:** Yuugiou and all its characters are copyright to Takahashi Kazuki and associated copyright holders, of which I am not one. I do own the storyline, such that it is, though. So the moral of this story is: Mine, steal, die.

* * *

He had always done his best to try to find out some kind of information on the Collector in his vast amounts of spare time. He was doing overtime on it now, even at this early hour of the morning-six a.m., when he had little doubt any of them slept much the night before-and he had the feeling that was what Mokuba was doing on his laptop in the corner of the room; his teenaged brother was wearing that intense face of concentration that usually only showed up when he was working some kind of prank or genius gaming idea.

And if Bakura knew anything about computers, he had no doubt that the other man would have had a laptop out, looking as hard as he could for the Collector as well. Personally, Kaiba had been surprised to learn that Bakura Ryou hadn't had much skill in the way of them either, so it wasn't like his Bakura could draw on that well of knowledge.

Instead, Bakura was sorting through the deck of cards that had once been his and Ryou's, pulling out cards that he didn't feel would be useful for what he apparently had in mind. Once Kaiba had gotten out of the hospital two years ago, a week later Bakura had broken into the apartment that had once been Ryou's and made off with a few personal items, mostly an insanely huge number of Monster World dolls and their deck of Duel Monsters. Mokuba had been kind enough to inform him of what Bakura could do with them.

In his own way, then, Bakura was building his arsenal. Seeing the cards he chose to keep and which cards he chose to discard for the time being, he almost was willing to pity anyone who made the white-haired man angry. Almost.

More than anything else, most especially pity, he just wanted to see the Collector and anyone willing to help him off the face of the earth forever. If Bakura was willing to feed them to the Man-Eater Bug, then that would most assuredly solve the problem-and in a rather spectacular fashion.

And there was always Diaboundo to consider. The _ka_ monster still showed up from time to time, usually when Bakura brought him to stretch a bit or when something really bothered the white-haired man. The only reason he hadn't been able to see the monster last night, he thought, was because they were all worrying; none of them had been looking for _ka_ monsters.

Either way, though, Diaboundo was a force to be reckoned with. He wasn't too sure he was ready to admit it to anyone, but he did remember Diaboundo grabbing him from his office building two years ago, when the ka monster had been under the Collector's control. Of course, he _also_ remembered Diaboundo protecting him until Bakura returned after Kaiba had sent the white-haired man into Ryou's body, though honestly he was none too sure how he managed to do that.

All in all, it was starting to add up to an impressive array of weapons on their side: his and Mokuba's brains hard at work on trying to track down the Collector before he gained more of an upper hand and Bakura's magic that he fully expected to be capable to taking down most anything the Collector bastard could throw at them.

This time, they were going to be prepared.

Really, though, they probably should have been concentrating more on this in the last years than on anything else. The company, his own health, and his... odd relationship with Bakura should have been secondary to finding out more about the Collector, since after all, the more they knew about the bastard, the more likely they were going to be able to take him down.

At the same time, though, he couldn't say that he regretted much of the time he had spent in the last two years, at least in some aspects. Yeah, maybe the company could have held off a bit; he did have a Board of Directors, and they were _fairly_ competent; so there was no reason why he had had to focus on it. The only excuse he could find was it had become an ingrained habit to make sure the company he had invested so much time, pain, and talent into stayed afloat.

As for his health... Well, honestly, there was no way that Bakura and Mokuba would have let him slack off on that. As it was, they had barely let him call out of an appointment, no matter what he was working on, no matter how dire it had seemed. Two days in captivity had done a number on his body and little good for his mental health. He had at least gotten them to slack off on the latter, but there was no way they were ignoring the former. Mokuba had dragged the sad, shaky, tear-filled eyes out from retirement and reminded him that they were going to be together for the rest of their lives and Kaiba wasn't going to be around if he didn't take care of himself; he had also added that Kaiba hadn't been in the best of shapes when he had been taken, already on sleep deprivation and positively lousy with poor eating habits. Bakura, on the other hand, had simply stared him down until he finally agreed, though he honestly got the idea that if he had managed to resist both the white-haired man and his own little brother, then Bakura might have tried for a kidnapping of his own, this time to bodily take him to a physician.

And then there was that final point. The rational part of his mind insisted that starting a-relationship, he supposed was the best word-right now was far from the wisest choice he had ever made. That was the thing, though: it was also one of the better choices he had ever made. He might not want to admit it, even to himself-or maybe _especially_ to himself-but Bakura had been good for him. Mokuba had even commented only a few months ago that he seemed like he was coming out of his shell in the past couple of years.

He liked to think that he had been good for Bakura too: the thief was generally less tense, less ready to fly off the handle at the slightest provocation lately. Well, up until yesterday, that had been true, but it certainly wasn't any longer. Still, in general, he seemed better, and that was good.

Two years ago, he had thought to himself that Ryou might have been Bakura's version of Mokuba. He was still fairly certain that was correct, though he had never gotten around to asking. Besides, even he knew that _that_? That would be beyond bad taste.

Those were two things he never talked about with Bakura, two subjects he was never going to breech: Seth and Ryou. It was for totally different reasons, but it still involved that same need for privacy. Bakura hadn't pried too much into his life; he should be willing to extend the same courtesy in return.

If anyone asked, however, his entire attention was on the monitor before him. He wasn't watching Mokuba type in his corner or Bakura shuffling and reshuffling his cards or the doors, windows, and any other possible exits and entrances into the room. He wasn't thinking about things he should not be concerned with. No, he was focusing on tracking down the Collector, and that was it.

He just wasn't having much luck, and unfortunately, he was still tired enough that his mind was beginning to wander around a bit.

It didn't matter. He was going to find this information out, one way or another. He would figure this whole thing out, somehow or another. He would persevere.

* * *

**30 December 2013**

Again, if you're still reading, let me know, so I can keep writing.

Apollymi


	6. Chapter 5: Conscious

**Crooked Way**  
Chapter Five: "Consciousness"  
by Apollymi

**Word Count:** 1,840**  
Genre: **Shounen-ai, Bakura/Kaiba  
**Sequel to: **Where Angels  
**Written for: **24 Hour Themes (on Dreamwidth)**  
Author's Note:** Yuugiou and all its characters are copyright to Takahashi Kazuki and associated copyright holders, of which I am not one. I do own the storyline, such that it is, though. So the moral of this story is: Mine, steal, die.

* * *

"I hate to say it," Mokuba began, and he actually sounded like he really meant that, "but it almost looks like the bastard is up to his old tricks again." He stood and walked over to the desk, turning his laptop around to face the other two men in the room so they could see what it had to say.

He could almost literally feel the blood draining from his face as he skimmed quickly over the contents. Eight young men, all between the ages of eighteen and twenty, had been found in the same drained condition that Ryou had been found in. All of them had the same odd cuff scars around their wrists, and from the pictures Mokuba had somehow turned up, they looked almost identical to the ones he and Bakura still bore.

There were differences, though, enough that some people were starting to take notice. He had managed to keep his own kidnapping out of the media, thanks to Mokuba and also a large but anonymous donation to the police force, but when it was a tourist who disappeared, people did tend to notice things like that. So the Collector wasn't just choosing duelists now-or at least not the ones who had competed in Battle City-or people with a connection to the Nameless Pharaoh.

If he was choosing people at random, then that made him ever so much more difficult to try to anticipate. At least before he could monitor the duelists from Battle City or anyone who had a connection with the Lost Dynasty and make sure no one was approaching them who seemed too out of the ordinary.

Now, though? Now he was going to have to come up with something truly brilliant and inspired. When things were as random as this was proving to be, it was hard to make any kind of second guesses.

That didn't mean he wasn't going to try, though. He just had to come up with something completely out there to combat an enemy was also completely out there.

Easier said than done.

Bakura was frowning hard as he studied the page, commandeering the trackpad and scrolling through some of the news articles and photos quickly. He had to wonder if the white-haired man had seen something they were missing.

"Bakura?"

With a jolt, Bakura looked up, seemingly completely startled by the sudden sound of his voice. In typical Bakura fashion, though, he recovered quickly, so much so in fact that he could have almost sworn that he had imagined the look on surprise on the other man's face.

"Yeah?" Bakura returned.

"Did you see something here? Is there something there we need to know?" Because there was no way in hell he was going to ask if there was some magical significance to the number or the nationalities or even to where they were found: just off the docks in various coastal cities: Tokyo, Domino, Okinawa... but mostly here in Domino.

"Eight seems like an odd number," Bakura finally stated after a lengthy pause while he considered over his words. "It seems like there should have only been five. Barring that, there probably should have been thirteen of them." And he wasn't going to ask what that meant. He wasn't. There was no way he wanted to know that kind of information.

Mokuba, on the other hand, was a completely different story. "What makes the numbers significant, Bakura-kun?"

Bakura shook his head slowly, apparently barely paying attention to the conversation he was the focus of. "Five for the five elements. Thirteen because it's an unlucky number; some people even say it's unholy."

"Could they be working their way to thirteen, and we just caught on too quickly?" Mokuba prompted after an extended silence.

But Bakura was already shaking his head. "It doesn't sound right." He tapped a few buttons on Mokuba's laptop, bringing up a map of Japan, and he quickly added spots on the maps for where each of the bodies was found before continuing. "And there isn't a pattern of anything kind to be seen in this. No way: it's too random."

"So there's no... other explanations about the deaths. Should we be looking at something less obvious?" Mokuba prompted.

Well, the whole... 'other explanations', as Mokuba so aptly put it, was the solution that had made the most sense.

"He needs power to run the machine that would bring the Unnamed Pharaoh back from the dead, for real this time," Kaiba ventured forth with. "Maybe we were wrong in thinking it was only people connected to the other Yuugi that he was targeting." He paused a long second before continuing. "We might have made his target of preference-duelers or people connected to Egypt-too difficult to reach. He might have had to... I don't know: venture outside his comfort zone."

"Assuming that none of the boys who have been drained aren't duelists, just on the amateur circuit?" countered Bakura.

Sadly that was a fair point. While he still might know a majority of the professional duelists out there, there were thousands playing as amateurs, maybe more. It was too broad a field to try to narrow down.

Still, he had to concede the point. "Unless they're amateur duelists. I can't keep up with all of them."

"Only you would even bother to try," Mokuba commented dryly. Sometimes he had to love his little brother's bone-dry wit. Sometimes, he really didn't. "So maybe they're duelists, maybe they're not," he continued. "That doesn't change the fact that eight seems like an odd number to me."

Bakura was nodding, leaning back into his chair again. "It's a weird number. He can't have gotten the amount of magic and souls he would need off that few people. Most people just don't have enough of it in them to power a battery, much less bring His Royal Pain in My Ass back to life."

"So he'll probably make a move soon for someone with more... magic?" He could actually hear Mokuba hesitated over the world 'magic'. It was still such a silly concept to both of the Kaiba brothers, but there was no escaping it, not any time soon. "Do you think that's possible, Bakura-kun?"

The white-haired man shrugged slightly. "I wouldn't put it past him. From my limited experience with him, he's egotistical and probably thinks he won't get caught doing this."

He nodded slightly. "That meshes with what I experienced with him as well." He paused for a second, tossing an idea back and forth in his mind before tentatively giving voice to it. "I'm relatively certain he has a lot of money. None of that equipment would come cheap. Even if you built it from scratch, some of the components would be very hard to get a hold of."

"Making them cost more," Mokuba added in.

He nodded in agreement. "He also was very... arrogant about not needing ransom money, like the thought of it was somehow beneath him."

Bakura snorted. "Sounds like new money then." Mokuba shot the other man a curious look, and he might well have been also because that was a comment from out of nowhere. The white-haired man snickered softly. "Time may come and go, but one thing always stays the same: money and the people with it. People who earn it treat it one way, but people who inherit it treat it in another way. He sounds like the flashy kind of new money, the kind who wants to display it to the world."

And he suddenly had a very clear picture of his board of directors and where all of them fit in that neat little division Bakura had drawn. Most of them, he felt, would fall on the 'new money' side.

"So niisama and me?" Mokuba questioned. "Where do we fall?"

And Bakura actually laughed at that, one of those rare laughs he rarely got to hear. "You two are freaks of nature, just like me."

That dragged laughter out of Mokuba and half a smile out of him. They _were_ all a bit odd at that. Bakura, though, was the only one who, more or less, celebrated it. He might not be the same Bakura he had known in high school, but he did still behave in a lot of the same ways: he was always impetuous but with an endgame in mind; if someone ever pissed him off, he would extract revenge for a long, long time, and it didn't matter if it was served hot or cold, as long as he got his revenge; he could still let loose a cackle that would probably make Jounouchi hide under the desk; and he still hated both of the Yuugis beyond all reason, more than even _he_ hated them.

Too soon, though, the laughter had to die down, as Mokuba asked the question that he was sure was on all of their minds. "So what do we do from here?"

"We keep searching," he immediately answered. "There has to be a pattern of some sort."

Bakura was conspicuously silent for several long moments before speaking up as well, long enough for the clock to tick through a full minute of the eight o'clock hour. "We don't go anywhere by ourselves, especially not you, Seto." He started to object, but Bakura just spoke over him. "_You're_ the one he took last time. _You're_ the one he sent the note to this time. He's going to be coming. I don't know when or where, but he will be coming." Under his breath, clearly not meaning for the words to be heard, he continued. "It's what I would do."

There was that uncomfortable silence again. He hated it. God, how he hated it. He didn't like the look that came over Bakura's face when something from the time he had been possessed by Zork was brought up: the way it shuttered over and went completely blank. He hated it. He hated that he knew it so well.

"We'll all take extra precautions," he stated flatly, rather than address what he was actually thinking. "Mokuba, I'm authorizing you to pull several guards from security duty. They're going to with us around the clock."

So maybe he still wasn't so good with the emotional parts of a relationship, be it with his younger brother or his... lover (it never quite seemed like the right word, like it was almost too tawdry or something, but there was no way he was calling Bakura his 'boyfriend'). He was, however, quite good at showing concern for their physical wellbeing, and that was a huge step for him. It was a bigger change for him than most people, excluding the two in the room, would ever realize.

He couldn't be perfect, but he was trying to be better. As long as the Collector stayed off his back, he might actually get to being good at it, so long as he kept consciously reminding himself of it. And that was the challenge of it.

* * *

**30 December 2013**

If you're still reading, please let me know, so I can keep writing. This is the last currently finished chapter.

Apollymi


End file.
